Podcast with Alessandra Marini Part 1
Summary:
Uncover the transformative power of coaching in Part 1 of ourcaptivating podcast with Alessandra Marini. Join us as she shares her journey
from consultant to certified coach and reveals how self-awareness and
overcoming limiting beliefs can unlock your full potential. Discover
Alessandra's holistic approach to creating a healthy work environment and
improving professional relationships. If you're ready to ignite personal growth
and transform your workplace, don't miss this episode filled with valuable
insights and empowering strategies. Tune in now and embark on a journey of
self-discovery with Alessandra Marini.
In this podcast episode, Alessandra Marini, an internationalcoach and lean six sigma expert, shares her journey and insights into the world
of coaching. Alessandra's encounter with a coach sparked her interest in
helping people discover their inner wisdom. Through her consulting and
mentoring work, she realized the importance of self-awareness and overcoming
limiting beliefs. Alessandra's holistic approach focuses on creating a healthy
work environment and improving professional relationships. With her expertise
and experience, she empowers individuals to reach their full potential and
achieve their goals. Don't miss this episode as Alessandra offers valuable
insights into personal growth and transforming the workplace through coaching.
[00:00:00] Andrew Liew: Hi everybody. Thanks forlistening to this. Allow me to introduce Alessandra. It's a very great honor
for me. So Alessandra is an international coach. A psycho genealogy
practitioner, a trainer and a black belt lean six sigma expert.
[00:00:16] Andrew Liew: She's worked as a consultant forleaders and managers, taught her that change often starts at the personal
level. Leaders do not only need guidance on how to do what they need to, but
sometimes they also need to overcome underlying fears and limiting beliefs that
prevent them from performing at their best.
[00:00:37] Andrew Liew: And that's what Alessandra isgood at. She decides to become a coach to provide her clients a holistic
experience and support them create an environment for health and sustainable
performance in the workplace. Her years in consulting, the hundreds of training
facilitation hours, and the relationship with her coaches.
[00:00:55] Andrew Liew: Show her that we usually feelseen and heard [00:01:00] through others. Andsometimes it can lead to some unhealthy relation dynamics among team members in
distress situation or between leaders and the teams. And as such, people will
go to her as an expert of human interaction. She helps clients discover the
unconscious patterns they implement and repeat the imprisonment in them in
certain roles and behaviors.
[00:01:23] Andrew Liew: creating conflicts for them. Soshe actually helps the clients and her coaches to enable this new level of self
awareness so that they can improve their professional relationship and meet
more easily their ambitions, their goals, their targets, and expectation, and
try. in the workplace. And so let me share some of her clients, which is Laurel
Louis Vinton, EDF, RATP, Hamundi, Chanel, Lanza.
[00:01:52] Andrew Liew: Now, so apart from that, ofcourse, she has a very good academic credentials. Alessandra has a master's
degree in management and business [00:02:00]administration from the IAE, the Paris, Sorbonne, France. And she's also a certified
Black Six Sigma from the Qubit Partners. She has attended several courses in
coaching such as the Essential Coaching from the HEC Paris, the Professional
Coach from the MHD formation, certified by the EMC European Mentoring Coaching
council, the psycho genealogy practitioner from resources at Wales Institution
of Coaching Mastery from El Sandra Nago.
[00:02:31] Andrew Liew: So later on you can also find herprofile on the LinkedIn profile and her website on the podcast page. ARA, thank
you for coming to the show.
[00:02:41] Alessandra Marini: Thank you, Andrew, to askme to come on. Thank you.
[00:02:45] Andrew Liew: Great. Let me begin by askingyou, because the audience would love to know how you tell your back story.
[00:02:54] Andrew Liew: How you get connected from theday you finish school all the way to realizing you want to [00:03:00] become a coach and how you impact that.
[00:03:01] Alessandra Marini: Yes. Thanks. Good question.So I decided to become a coach without even realizing that I wanted to be a
coach. I already was doing some coaching work before I became a certified
coach, but I was first thing first, I am Italian and I moved to France when I
was 19 years old.
[00:03:22] Alessandra Marini: And I went there to studyfor my university degree and I really loved what I was studying business and
economics and languages, foreign languages. This is why I, work, I coach and I
work with a lot of international people around the world. And yes, at some
point I met someone.
[00:03:43] Alessandra Marini: So it was a matter of anencounter. I met a one person that was a coach and I was asking him, okay, what
is your role? What is what is your job? And he said to me, my job is to ask
questions and I was wow, amazed. So you ask [00:04:00]questions to people and this is your job. You do not have. To to answer the
question and just, ask them.
[00:04:07] Alessandra Marini: And he said, yes, I helppeople to find their own wisdom within themselves. And this was the first seed
that was planted in me that helped me realize that maybe this was something
that I wanted to do later in life. And then my career led me to do some
consulting and mentoring work. And at some point I realized that in order to be
a better consultant and a trainer, I wanted to become a coach, so I decided to
move towards coaching as a way to become better at my at my job and then I was
hooked I could not Stop coaching and this is why I decided to Become a
certified coach and to create my own company.
[00:04:49] Alessandra Marini: So today I offer servicesin coaching Training mentoring and consulting as well.
[00:04:55] Andrew Liew: Cool. And so let's look at thebackstory as you mentioned You [00:05:00] metthe coach. Do you still remember what was the story like? What's the scene like
how do you even met this? Coach. You inspire yes,
[00:05:09] Alessandra Marini: it's it's just, it's a nicestory because it was I remember it was a party girl when I was a little bit
younger and I was coming back from from a club.
[00:05:19] Alessandra Marini: It was a late in the night.And I, yeah. This person came to me and we started to, talk and we were both
going home from from this club and he started to tell me about about this. So I
remember it was a cold. So I think it was a winter time. And we went together
to take the subway in Paris.
[00:05:42] Alessandra Marini: And he started to talk tome about what he was doing and the fact that he had this vision about helping
people to yes, to find their their inner strength. And so he created a group,
which it no longer exists, unfortunately, but it was called the yes group where
he [00:06:00] helped people to say yes moreeasily in life.
[00:06:03] Alessandra Marini: And so he invited me to goto one of these monthly meeting and I went and And it was amazing. A lot of
beautiful people there just to to, get more curious about themselves and learn
more tools and strategies to, yeah, to enjoy life more.
[00:06:21] Andrew Liew: Ah, so that was an interestingstory. As you mentioned, you actually met this guy on the subway and he was
introducing you to the Yes group.
[00:06:30] Andrew Liew: And so. since then you, startedsimmering in you that you want to be a coach, why didn't you immediately move
to join a I don't know, coaching business or coaching clubs or shadow under a
super girl coach. Instead, you move into like consulting and some other stuff.
[00:06:47] Alessandra Marini: Yes. I think that I neededto do it at my own pace and to realize that this is what I wanted to do, even
though in my head. I remember that. And I also find the small [00:07:00] notebook where I wrote down my, dreams. In20 yes it, was in 2006. I wrote down in my notebook that I wanted to become a,
coach and a freelance, et cetera.
[00:07:11] Alessandra Marini: And a few years later, itbecame true. But I think that I needed to go through everything that life was
offering me in order to be bold enough to take that decision. So I think that
when you're a coach, you need to do your inner work first, and sometimes it
takes a little bit more time.
[00:07:30] Alessandra Marini: For some people, they needto, yeah, they want to do it, to jump into it right away. But this is what felt
right in my situation as I was experiencing other beautiful things in life and
it made sense in this way.
[00:07:45] Andrew Liew: I see. So you mentioned about youdecided to explore what life's offering you and take that time to cultivate the
inner workings.
[00:07:54] Alessandra Marini: Yes, absolutely. I eventhough as I was saying, I didn't [00:08:00]jump right away into coaching. I was interested in coaching. I started to read.
I met people. I did some inner Inquiry about myself, my beliefs, and it helped
me to be more aware of what I wanted to do and what I didn't want to do. And
even though I was not a certified coach, the way I was leading my career and my
professional life.
[00:08:24] Alessandra Marini: Was actually something thatwas very close to coaching because as we will maybe talk about it later, I was
helping teams to realize how they could do their job in a different way without
me telling them, Look here, you have a waste of time or here. Your client maybe
is awaiting on a necessary amount of time.
[00:08:46] Alessandra Marini: So just by asking powerfulquestion, you Teams were able to realize by themselves where they could improve
their daily life and their daily job, and this is what our coach usually do as
well.
[00:08:58] Andrew Liew: I see. So you, [00:09:00] over time, figure that it's always betterto use questions to get them to think about.
[00:09:06] Andrew Liew: What you eventually direct themto achieve the goals now, which is a team goal. Oh, that's interesting. So like
how long have you been like doing coaching since is it the last three years,
the last four years, last six years, I
[00:09:19] Alessandra Marini: don't know. Yes. So Istarted to really do coaching as a coach and not coaching through consulting
and training for the past two years.
[00:09:28] Alessandra Marini: But before that I was doingthis consulting and mentoring work using coaching methodologies. But without
the proper certification and this is why at some point I said if I want to up
level my game I need and I want to be a certified coach because I have more
Credential and also I have more tools to help the clients with the right thing.
[00:09:50] Alessandra Marini: They need
[00:09:50] Andrew Liew: interesting. So tell me more liketo the audience like because the coaching is a recent demand that according to,
you know, Wall Street [00:10:00] journals or Timesmagazine or even the economists ever since the dawn of the COVID 19 pandemic.
There's so many things that's going on. And even when I was a chief data
scientist in Singapore Airlines or in DBS Bank, one of the biggest banks in the
world, the company at the global level do actually allocate resources to coach
their senior leaders.
[00:10:23] Andrew Liew: And it's, it becomes moreimportant in doing the COVID 19 period. And so my question to you is that, have
you observed any what do you think is the, rise in the demand for coaching
because of COVID
[00:10:38] Alessandra Marini: 19? Yeah, of course I, havethe feeling as well and the data speak as well that COVID has increased the
people inquiry about themselves.
[00:10:47] Alessandra Marini: So they're less. Becausethey had a lot of time to think about their career or their life as we were
locked down, we were in our own places and we had time to think. [00:11:00] And it's a beautiful opportunity eventhough sometimes it's a little bit scary when you have these questions, this
powerful and big question coming, up.
[00:11:09] Alessandra Marini: But it really wakens up,waken us up about what is important for us. Because what was happening before
COVID is that we were always distracted by all the things we were jumping into
new activities or doing extra hours at work or going out a lot, et cetera, et
cetera. But this was preventing us to look inside of ourselves.
[00:11:32] Alessandra Marini: So the COVID just forced usto slow down. To slow down and really think about what we really want to do in
life. So in this way, it is a beautiful opportunity. Despite the fact that, of
course, it was a disaster in terms of human lives and economic crisis, et
cetera. But I really think that after COVID, what I noticed is that there are a
lot of more demands especially regarding the career path.
[00:11:55] Alessandra Marini: Because people realize thatsometimes they, have been doing what is called the [00:12:00]bullshit jobs. It's not a very good way of calling them, but it's yeah, they're
just occupying themselves doing stuff that are not very useful. And I think
that this is very linked to the fact that we need meaning in our life and in
our job as we are spending so many hours in our in our professional life.
[00:12:19] Alessandra Marini: And I also think that COVIDHelped us realize that we need more balance among all the spheres in our lives.
Professional life, of course, is an important one, but also family, self care,
health care, etc. So this is why people seek help in coaching to find balance
among all these parts in our lives.
[00:12:40] Andrew Liew: Yeah like, you say there's twoparts. So yeah, what was the part where I resonate with you like a bullshit
judge? I was a consultant myself and I was in house. I noticed there's always
two groups of people. Like one group of people is the growth mindset. Oh, this
challenge is difficult. Oh, this is my job.
[00:12:56] Andrew Liew: I'll do my best to learn, to dothe job. And there's another group of [00:13:00]people is that They'll be like, oh man, I can't do this job. Never mind. Let me
go and create another job. But this new job doesn't create value to company and
it creates like, they create existential jobs to to, do bullshit jobs.
[00:13:15] Andrew Liew: Now, the second part youmentioned about that yeah, the, there's a rise of people like being aware of
that. career seeking career coach, because the leaders are also like you said,
it's a time where they are forced to handle so many things like, for example,
during COVID 19, they are forced to workplace safety, they have to work from
home.
[00:13:35] Andrew Liew: This is the first time they Feelvery uncomfortable. There's this what we call the like proximity bias. I need
to see my people especially in asia, you probably realize that if I don't see
them. I don't know where they're doing their job I don't feel safe. I don't
feel secure So they need coaching in the leadership because the style has
changed right people have to work from home so that's the second part which is
the leadership to manage the proximity bias and then the third one is[00:14:00] You know, when there's so many things thatthey need to do, they need to make, take care of their people.
[00:14:04] Andrew Liew: They need to make sure that thepeople are doing business as usual and do digital transformation. There's
burnout. Burnout is real. So there's the third one, which is like, how do you
Mental well being of coaching. So can you share with us like among these two or
three forms of coaching what is your view of the current status and what is
your view in the future and what yourself actually does there's so many
different types of coaching.
[00:14:29] Alessandra Marini: Yes, absolutely. Oh, yes.You said so many true things I think that one of the struggles that leaders can
can face is the work from home, as you were saying, because of course we were
always used to see people and counting the amount of hours they were working.
Working with yeah, supposedly working as a way to feel validated as managers or
as leaders because yes, they are working because they are behind [00:15:00] their screens.
[00:15:00] Alessandra Marini: But actually, we were not,or they were not, maybe some of them really Monitoring the amount of work that
was doing so they was they were supervising the amount of hours and this was
their performance indicator. Okay. My people are here five days a week. So they
have performed. Now they have or now in the past few years, they had to switch
to a different perspective and a different way to to evaluate and assess
performance, which is not the amount of hours people work.
[00:15:33] Alessandra Marini: But the amount of resultthey achieve and I think that this is something that leaders maybe felt a
little bit lonely about this because in companies, this is how it has always
been done. And now we need to change this. And have more outcome results,
outcome indicators that help us, okay I have performed or my team has performed
no matter how much time I have worked [00:16:00]on it.
[00:16:00] Alessandra Marini: And